


Through the Narrow Gate (The Constancy Remix)

by coricomile



Category: Torchwood
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-29
Updated: 2015-06-29
Packaged: 2018-04-06 18:06:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4231617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coricomile/pseuds/coricomile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack doesn’t know how many times he’s died.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Through the Narrow Gate (The Constancy Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [heeroluva](https://archiveofourown.org/users/heeroluva/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Enough](https://archiveofourown.org/works/201538) by [heeroluva](https://archiveofourown.org/users/heeroluva/pseuds/heeroluva). 
  * In response to a prompt by [heeroluva](https://archiveofourown.org/users/heeroluva/pseuds/heeroluva) in the [remixmadness2015](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/remixmadness2015) collection. 



Jack doesn’t know how many times he’s died. He’s lived too long, had too many lives, and his memory starts to get fuzzy if he goes back too far. He remembers the way the sand felt under his bare feet on Boeshane, but he cannot remember his father’s face. He cannot remember his mother’s voice. He cannot remember two of the most dangerous years of his life.

Death is both like sleep and nothing like it at all. There’s the pain- he’s died by poison, by asphyxiation, by drowning, but usually it’s more gunshots and knife wounds- and the silence. The dark. The nothing of non-existence.

Then the rushing, blood surging reemergence into life, screaming and gasping like a newborn fresh from the womb. Life 2.0. More recently, there’s been the addition of Ianto, holding him and murmuring comforting nonsense at him. 

Ianto, who won’t let him wake up alone. Ianto, who tries to hide his fear but never really can. A beautiful child in a world too big for him, unable to grasp Jack’s stasis in life no matter how many times he sees it. He thinks one day there will be something too much, that one day Jack’s cure will come through the rift and strike him finally, finally dead.

Jack wishes it would. He’s tired of living. 

“Still here,” Jack says when he can, holding whatever part of Ianto he can. His clammy hand, his shaking arms. “Still here.”

When Ianto’s gone- because he will be, sooner rather than later, the Torchwood curse- Jack will go back to waking up alone. He’ll have that one, singular moment of confusion, of wonder, and then the world will crash back down around him, changing even as he doesn’t. 

He is a constant when nothing else can be. He will live until the universe dies, and live some more.


End file.
